Designing a Model of a Digital Ecosystem for Healthcare and Wellness Using the Business Model Canvas

Abstract

Wellness is a term often used to talk about optimal health as "dynamic balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health." While healthcare is a term about care offered to patients for improving their health. We use both terms, as well as the Business Model Canvas (BMC) methodology, to design a digital ecosystem model for healthcare and wellness called DE4HW; the model considers economic, technological, and legal asymmetries, which are present on e-services beyond geographical regions. BMC methodology was embedded into the global project strategy called: IBOT (Initiate, Build, Operate and Transfer); it is a methodology to establish a functional, integrated national telemedicine network and virtual education network; of which we took its phases rationale. The results in this work illustrate the design of DE4HW model, into the first phase of IBOT, enriched with the BMC, which enables us to define actors, their interactions, rules and protocols, in order to build DE4HW, while IBOT strategy manages the project goal, up to the transfer phase, where an integral service platform of healthcare and wellness is turned over to stakeholders.

A Model to Define an eHealth Technological Ecosystem for Caregivers

“…In order to design the business structure, we use the BMC approach developed by Osterwalder and Pigneur [13]. Osterwalder's approach has proven to be a valuable tool for describing not only commercial business models, but also in many other contexts including health-related ecosystems [16][17][18]. From a business perspective, one of the main distinctions of technological ecosystems when compared to other types of business models resides in the involvement of the different ecosystem actors in value cocreation.…”

Detection and Characterization of E-Health Research: A Bibliometrics (2001–2016)

“…Jane does an organizational analysis of the implementation of telehealth in view of whole systems [71]. Scholars are also concerned about factors having impact on E-health applications, whether they are positive factors or obstacles [72][73][74]. With the increase of E-health project numbers, these areas deserved more empirical investigation and have been research frontiers, such as the ways to identify and anticipate how E-health services will impact everyday clinical practice, how new Ehealth services will affect clinical interactions and performance of clinical work, and the effects of different methods of engaging with professionals before and during the implementation of E-health.…”

Modelling the business structure of a digital health ecosystem

“…Regarding the business structure, an initial approach to the ecosystem's business definition approach has been presented in [13], by the fulfilment of the Business Model Canvas (BMC) proposed by Osterwalder [15]. Osterwalder's approach has proven to be a valuable tool for describing not only commercial business models, but also in many other contexts including health-related ecosystems [16]. However, in order to successfully integrate the business and software structures, it turns out necessary that the software product requirements are aligned with the business needs, both in terms of business processes as in terms of the informational entities those processes deal with.…”